re: Staining kitchen cabinets

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Have any of you stained your kitchen cabinets? Looking to make them darker. If so, how was the overall experience? Also, did you use Rust-Oleum Transformations Cabinet Wood Refinishing System Kit? Thanks in advance!

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I did this with mine, but I went with the paint kit instead of the stain. They came out really well. Its a long process though, well for me it was bc I have a lot of cabinets in my kitchen.

When we moved into this house last August I stained all of the kitchen cabinets. It was a LONG arse process and I did a good bit of research before hand. I used a gel stain on the cabinets, its a lot more robust than a traditional stain. Its not really a stain, its not really a paint, it's somewhere in between the two with a consistency of pudding.

I went with General Finishes Java...its not sold in big box stores. I got it from a place called Woodcraft, they sell it on Amazon as well. Depending how much you apply it can be really dark or on the lighter end of the spectrum...the cabinets are on the lighter side of Java but we did the railing with the same stain that looks way darker.


I have a couple of crappy pictures from when I was going through it. Process was simple but time consuming...I did some very light sanding just to rough up the faces then thoroughly cleaned them. People online said to use tack cloth, I tried it but didn't seem necessary, just used a rag and water and let them dry.

First pic shows the difference between the sanded cabinets and the first coat.


Here are the doors after the 2nd coat. I ended up doing a 3rd coat to try and make things look more uniform but didn't go much darker.


Here they are hung. Staining the cabinet boxes sucked way worse than staining the cabinet doors. Also did soft-close hinges on the doors. Still on my to-do list to do soft close drawer slides and add drawer pulls.


Bonus pic: used the same stain for our railings but you can see how we went darker with it. They also started as the same honey oak as the cabinets.

Those look fantastic.

My dad made custom fireplace mantles in his spare time. Used that same kind of stain on more than one occasion. Said it took a little finesse to get used to using it... but did a great job staining and even sealing some to make everything easier after first coat.

Hadn't thought about that for a while.

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Stained cabinets are not in style right now. Go white or painted a light neutral color.

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I think it all depends on the wood.